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April 16, 2008: Events in the Copyright Appeal

There are some recent events in our copyright appeal to the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington DC.

On April 4th, 2008, Creative Commons Corp, The Linux Foundation, The Open Source Initiative, Software Freedom Law Center, Yet Another Society and Wikimedia Foundation filed a request to be allowed to participate in oral argument at the hearing on May 7, 2008 in Washington DC. Katzer promptly filed an opposition. We filed a reply which argued that the amici have useful things to say, and requested that the court allow them to present their views. The amici also filed a reply describing how they would be presenting information the Court would find useful. Unfortunately, the Court denied the request.

Separately, also on April 4th, Katzer filed a "Notice of Supplemental Authority". This is a way to bring a recently-decided case to the attention of the court. Katzer cited Netbula v. Storage Technology, which is about two companies that negotiated a contract so Storage Tech could use copyrighted material that belonged to Netbula. When that deal went bad, Netbula accused Storage Tech of copyright infringement, but the Judge in the case found for Storage Tech. We've filed a reply, arguing that this case is very different from ours. In our case, we didn't negotiate a contract, and Katzer never did anything to accept one; no contract exists or has ever existed between us, so Katzer is clearly an infringer. Katzer seems to be citing this case to attempt to befuddle the Court about the facts, not to update them on the law.

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